Our Tutors
All our tutors are published authors who have PhDs from top schools with 10+ years helping students with their college essays.
We founded Real College Essays after noticing that much of the college essay advice out there didn’t align with what students truly needed. We’d taught at UC Berkeley for many years, and we noticed that a lot of counselors and coaches lacked specialized training in writing. As a result, the essay guidance students received was inconsistent or outsourced to less experienced reviewers.
As academics committed to one-on-one mentorship, we wanted to offer a different approach — where expert consultants with serious writing backgrounds personally guide each applicant through the challenging but rewarding essay-writing process.
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Ben Urwand
Ben founded Real College Essays after helping students with their writing for over 15 years. He taught for nearly a decade at UC Berkeley, and since then has been determined to help students write compelling admissions essays. He is the author of The Collaboration (Harvard University Press), which was widely discussed in international media, and he has written for publications such as Time, Harper’s, and The Hollywood Reporter. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley, his MA from the University of Chicago, and he was elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows.
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Sarah Stoller
Sarah is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience coaching students in college admissions essay writing. She has taught writing both one-on-one and in the classroom setting to students at the high school and college levels. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Washington Post, Salon, Slate, and Jezebel, among others. She is also the author of Inventing the Working Parent (MIT Press). She received a PhD from UC Berkeley, an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge, and a BA from UC Berkeley.
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